CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY ignorance an accessible excuse via sorrydom, the leaders who yank intestines to make them beg fo r mercy as loudly as a bargaining-down stando f f in an auction fo r emeralds; they’re the right crowd, but I ’m, hopefully, with as much snot as possible, the More Right crowd, and I sneeze them, I ’m allergic, I ’m mean to meanness, I ’m a person whose guilty doings were too carefully planned fo r pricepaying; I ’m all too normal when the typewriter sleeps, a regular person to extremes, you know, just that itemcounter before using express lanes and that closet litterbug who would pocket trash before tossing it on the sidewalk; Goddamn right I ’m proud — spars and sprites forever and ever A-fuckin-men) Okay, frantic fingers passified, I’ll return to the story. A pass for two. A payoff, but probably really a gesture, another feeble stab. I figured that two times regular admission equals $3.50 and for a five-minute walk-on, completely unrehearsed, what the hell. I put the apology away and felt my guilt-riddled eyeglasses cringe. I was still too movied to realize how scared I had been. Tricia said that one of her thoughts was that we had gotten into trouble because she’d brought her own popcorn. We left the lobby to an unlit marquee and empty sidewalks; everyone had left because I wasn’t someone else. The squad cars had split and the guns were cold showering somewhere and the bunches of people had gone their ways because I wasn’t an anybody anymore in terms of viewable drama. We walked towards the Lovejoy Market to get a quart of beer because I wanted, as per Dr. Trust’s words of wisdom, “ give , the shit something to float in.” I felt molested and rabid and wrung out, an I LOVE OREGON T-shirt without erect- nipple Braille but with soggy groggy erosion of every thread. A guy came up to us and said he’d called the camera crew because he’d seen the forces gather and strategically position themselves over 30 min- ,utes before the show was scheduled to end. That people had begun to watch and wait. That things looked weird. That he felt the presence of media might keep police behavior in line. I was too shuffled to stack a correct thank you; “ Huh,” I huh-ed. Tricia wondered why the police hadn’t apologized in front of everyone. She felt that, immediately upon seeing their error, they should’ve slapped their brows, groaned, and turned to all bystanders with sheepish mumbles and shrugs. We bought a quart of beer and faded into the night. In following weeks we had to hear everyone’s arrest&trial story whenever the incident was mentioned. I hate arrest&trial stories and have long ago promised never to tell mine again (tales of southern nights) because, heck and gosh, we’ve all experienced life’s little lousy lunges and there’s joke-swap fever that comes with the recountings which 1 find depressing. But we sat through a new series of such ballads whenever the bout with Rocky II came up. I kept trying to inject what 1 felt were critical points about our no-arrest&no-trial story and that’s what I’ll do here to tidy up: 1. There was no arrest; and though I certainly had grounds for initiating repercussions, I didn’t feel the police had done anything wrong in intent to apprehend a dangerous person instead of doing the sorts of goofball gad- abouting which seem to create all those aforementioned arrest&trial stories from the same synthetic weft; the fact that they ended up with me instead of a dangerous person was probably as distressing to them as it was to us. 2. Objects and coincidences are mighty pawns; the tip-off here came down to a reliance on someone’s junior-crime-stopper detections of eyeglasses and a height difference which could’ve been easily dismissed with a bother to check for boots (1 understand many people own these things). * 3. What if I’d gone to the bathroom inside the theater, up that narrow staircase to marquee-access? What if I’d angrily turned to Blondie, whose behavior surely warranted reproach, and told him, inside the theater, to drop dead? What if I fumbled through Tricia’s purse in the lobby for a mint? What if I’d been merely frightened and not shocked by the reception committee and responded to them with a fair-play attitude of abusive challenges and active gesticulations? Could I have been shot? Did I blow my chance at martyrdom? What if I’d urgently hiked up my pants to a more secure level out of embarrassment caused by the attention? I think I was luckily so-normal enough to have avoided doing any natural thing, because any one of them could’ve voided my pass; as those bumper-brains say, “ when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” ; well, shit, maybe they’ll need them. 4. I hope that in heaven we’ll be told that it was the popcorn, an old god joke. 5. Old Irish should’ve bought me that quart of beer and hung around and told me how many stories there really are in the Naked City and what a life it’s been. And now, in deliberate retrospection for sake of muffling further tirades and puss-blottings, I’ve told my story. As the great humorist said, “ It is written.” It is fragile material at best but meant well; a cautionary tale that shouldn’t make going to a film yet another feed for paranoia, but should at least make it clear that going to a film is a type of escapism that can spark subsequent capture. If I’ve been at all malicious herein, I hasten to inform the reader that it w a s o n l y o u ^ fm a l i c ^—a n T Z b i d | for reprieve. “ in Decatur, red-haired lanky, led dorm vespers, had unthinkable skills in palm, he was frat city, upperclassman, and dead dead serious quad mom; in a criminology class, topics afloat in an eagereyed innocence, he called to be called and he stood and he spoke and he spoke: ‘anyone who gets in trouble with the law deserves it, even if he didn’t do what it was that he was caught for, or even convicted for, deserves it, because we’ve all been guilty sometime, somewhere, we’ve all paved the path and paved the path past-a case at hand and we’ve been guilty and God knows, God knows that, and that’s a right too right for you to see but that’s a fact and evidence and stories and alibis and particular innocences have nothing, not a solitary thing, to do with i t . . . . ’ ” sune>ow GALLtKY TAVERN Live music Tues.-Sat. Extensive list of fine wines Beer and sandwiches 206 S.W. Stark Portland, Oregon 503/221-0258 Open 11-5 Mon.-Sat. distinctive crafts by northwest artists Open Monday through Saturday SW 11th &Morrison 227-8219 35
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